Addressing Features, Operating Protocols and Global Strategies
Tony Della-Porta knows there is no such thing as a perfect biocontainment facility. He also knows the importance of improving standards, increasing safety, and enhancing staff training at BSL-3 and BSL-4 laboratories throughout the world. The bird flu virus and the SARS virus, both potentially fatal infectious agents handled by high-containment microbiology labs, present a compelling case about the need for more stringent standards.

Mission Readiness Drives all Facilities Decisions
Imagine this: You oversee 33 million sf of facilities averaging over 43 years old, located in more than 8,000 buildings on 65,000 acres scattered over more than 1,800 individual sites.

Illustrates New and Unique Features for Animal Biosafety
The U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) recently opened its newly renovated aerobiology ABSL-3 suite at Fort Detrick in Frederick, Md. The 4,800-sf facility includes labs and animal holding rooms designed for high throughput animal bioaerosol efficacy studies conducted with Select Agents and toxins.

Complex Model Predicts Space Requirements Six Years Out
Planners at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston have developed a model that allows them to so accurately anticipate the facilities needs of their researchers and medical staff, they can have space ready to occupy before it is even requested.

Water is Everywhere, and Rust Never Sleeps
Designing a research facility to stand up to harsh coastal conditions means dealing with paradox, or at least extremes and contradictions. A breeze that can be harnessed to provide natural cooling can turn into a gust strong enough to shatter glass. The same seawater that is so essential for supporting aquatic life in the marine biology lab can also, over time, destroy the piping that delivers it.

Mind-boggling sums can be spent on waterfront development, but the typical budget for a coastal science center certainly falls within the standard for academic facilities. Dividing building types by function into three categories, Keith Bailey, a principal with HDR Architecture in Alexandria, Va., supplies the following data for five projects he led.

Tools, Strategies, and "Selective Scoping" Help Manage Risk
Too many owners have recently discovered that construction budgets developed prior to 2004 are inadequate. Add in the effects of last year's hurricane season plus the cost of petroleum-based products, and capital project decision-making has reached a crisis point.

Part II
Big machine research equipment can lead to major advances in medical treatments and discoveries of new technologies and products. Using the equipment can yield tremendous research rewards, but designing and installing the room-sized instruments is not for the faint of heart. It requires precision and expertise to design and install equipment capable of performing at the highest level of efficiency required to produce optimum results.

Increasing Scientific Output Through Advanced Facility Programming
Wyeth Research, a New Jersey-based global life sciences company, has developed a refined set of strategic planning tools that help facility managers reduce costs and improve scientific productivity worldwide. Using an array of analytical techniques, the facilities team increases scientific output by optimizing the way laboratory space is programmed. In a recent case, facility managers generated cost savings and increased productivity by consolidating the operations of a remote research facility in Cambridge, Mass., to an existing building on the company's R&D campus.